30 October 2012

Here are some screenshots from three films with a colour palette that I find very appealing: muted and earthy, almost monochromatic, with rich, warm accents. Their compelling effect is produced through a combination of the skills and aesthetic sensibility of the director, cinematographer, production designer, art director and costume designer. This is of course an entirely subjective experience, but there is something about the colours and textures in the following pictures that deeply moves me. They project humility and honesty, and a raw imperfection that one can sympathise with while being inspired by its quiet, unassuming beauty.

Hopefully you get the same vibes as I do (click on the pictures to enlarge them).

From John Hillcoat’s Lawless, with cinematography by Benoît Delhomme, production design by Chris Kennedy, art direction by Gershon Ginsburg and costume design by Margot Wilson.

23 October 2012

I recently came across a collection of photos in the pages of Milk magazine that captivated me with its humour, wit and serendipity.
The photographer was a Frenchman named René Maltête (1930 – 2000). Though less
well-known than his French-American peer Elliott Erwitt, Maltête had the same eye (and
timing) for spontaneous, funny moments that were only immortalised on film
thanks to the pairing of good fortune with the adroit touch of the
photographer. It’s a kind of photography that really impresses me – and
inspires my own approach – because of its emphasis on the subject matter, rather than
technical polish or elaborate contrivance. Photographs taken by Maltête or Erwitt
are never trite.

18 October 2012

Recently Newsweek published a fluff piece about neurosurgeon Eben Alexander’s near death experience in which he claims to have visited heaven. I don’t know which confounds me more: that a (supposedly) reputable magazine should peddle such flagrantly religious propaganda as though it was serious, objective journalism, or that a medical professional conversant with the human brain can be so ignorant of its neurological flaws and biases.

Sam Harris and Steven Novella both exposed Alexander’s feel-good anecdotes for what they really are: post hoc rationalisations and selective memories coloured by his Christian beliefs. ‘Proof’ of heaven they certainly are not. Novella’s critique got a response from someone who thought that skeptics like him were targeting “topics or elements of human culture that are neither harmful nor unhealthy”. It’s a common gripe; skeptics are a bunch of curmudgeons and wet blankets who unnecessarily pick on people’s silly but harmless beliefs just to feel superior to the superstitious peasants. Novella replied with a blog post defending the skeptic’s interrogation of so-called ‘harmless’ beliefs, like Alexander’s belief in an afterlife. He writes:

The major unstated premise of this criticism [against skeptics] is that a claim or belief must have direct demonstrable harm in order to be harmful. A further unstated premise is that the belief itself is the only subject of concern. […]

What I think does matter is the intellectual process – how do people reason and come to the beliefs that they hold? A harmless but flawed belief is likely to be the result of a flawed thought process, and it is that thought process that I think is important. The same intellectual flaws are likely to lead to other false conclusions that do have immediate consequences.

Novella makes a good point; the actual false or flawed belief may be inconsequential, but the sloppy thinking that leads to forming such beliefs can just as easily result in beliefs that are harmful. Or if not strictly harmful, then conducive to ignorance. Referring to Alexander’s particular case, Novella writes:

The story that Alexander tells, coming with the authority of a Harvard neurosurgeon, promotes misconceptions about the nature of brain function and coma. I have to frequently deal with families of loved-ones who are in a coma, and I can attest to the fact that having significant misconceptions about brain function can be a significant impediment to making rational health care decisions in those difficult situations.

Further, it is extremely helpful in understanding the world in general to know something about how our brains construct the model of reality that we have in our heads, and how that construction can be altered, even in significant ways. That is the real lesson of Alexander’s experience, one that is missed if we instead grab for a pleasing fiction.

Generally speaking, skeptics like Steven Novella and Sam Harris are not simply being mean when they aim to burst people’s bubbles. The justification for debunking harmful beliefs may be obvious, but as Novella argues, debunking harmless ones is just as important, albeit for less direct reasons.

17 October 2012

Advocates for freedom of thought and expression have a
reason to celebrate: the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has
failed to gain UN support for its call to outlaw blasphemy and insults to
religion. Muslim member states of the OIC have been pushing for a UN-backed ban
on blasphemy for almost 14 years. They suffered a serious setback last year
when the UN General Assembly omitted any mention of outlawing “defamation of
religions” in a statement condemning religious intolerance.

But after all these years, the OIC has finally given up
trying to ‘legitimately’ gag those who criticise or mock their faith. Of
course, it’s those horrible American and European spoilsports who stymied the
OIC’s plan to silence all criticism of religion (and by ‘religion’, we
know the OIC means Islam), whether valid or odious, eloquent or crass. Its
Turkish secretary general, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, is apparently unimpressed
by Western notions of free speech:

The long dispute highlighted differing
views of free speech in Western and Muslim countries. Ihsanoglu said Western
states had a “strange understanding” of free speech if it could be abused to
hurt and insult others.

Well Mr Secretary General, us Westerners believe that no one
has the right to not be insulted, let alone the right to expect the state to
punish those who have given offense. This is a fundamental aspect of free
speech. It is your understanding of free speech that is
truly strange; one is free to express oneself except when one offends others for
totally arbitrary reasons. How can such a conception even be
considered free speech? Your country’s prime minister also
seems to share your peculiar understanding.

Ihsanoglu may wring his hands over the potential
abuse of free speech, yet blasphemy laws are just as susceptible to abuse, with
arguably more sinister consequences:

But while editorialists and religious
leaders have renewed calls for a worldwide blasphemy ban, few national leaders
have actually ended their rhetorical reactions with that demand.

One who did at the United
Nations last month was President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan, whose own
national blasphemy law has come under increasing criticism at home and abroad
as open to widespread abuse against minority Christians.

Ihsanoglu, speaking at the
conference on a panel with Pakistani opposition leader Imran Khan, encouraged
countries with blasphemy laws to apply them against insults to Islam, and then
quickly added: “not particularly the one in Pakistan”.

I find it quite telling how Ihsanoglu isn’t very keen
on the logical conclusion of enforcing blasphemy laws.

16 October 2012

I am a naturalist, in the philosophical sense; I believe
that there is only one realm of existence subject to the laws of nature, which can
be discovered and studied through observation, reason and the methods of science.
Conversely, I do not believe in supernatural things like gods, ghosts and
mystical forces that ignore the laws of nature. It goes without saying that
naturalism is opposed to ideologies like religion, pseudoscience, mysticism and
superstition in general.

A group of scientists and philosophers are meeting at the
end of this month for a three-day workshop to discuss naturalism. It’s going to
be held at a rather pretty location, The Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge,
Massachusetts. Some big names will be participating: Richard Dawkins, Patricia
Churchland, Steven Weinberg, and my two favourite bloggers, Jerry Coyne (Why Evolution Is True) and Massimo Pigliucci (Rationally Speaking). Here’s an
overview of the topics they will be discussing from the ‘Moving Naturalism
Forward’ website linked above:

Free will.
If people are collections of atoms obeying the laws of physics, is it sensible
to say that they make choices?

Morality.
What is the origin of right and wrong? Are there objective standards?

Meaning.
Why live? Is there a rational justification for finding meaning in human
existence?

Purpose.
Do teleological concepts play a useful role in our description of natural
phenomena?

Epistemology.
Is science unique as a method for discovering true knowledge?

Emergence.
Does reductionism provide the best path to understanding complex systems, or do
different levels of description have autonomous existence?

Consciousness.
How do the phenomena of consciousness arise from the collective behavior of
inanimate matter?

Evolution.
Can the ideas of natural selection be usefully extended to areas outside of
biology, or can evolution be subsumed within a more general theory of complex
systems?

Determinism.
To what extent is the future determined given quantum uncertainty and chaos theory,
and does it matter?

One noticeable absentee is the neuroscientist and writer Sam
Harris. Given his controversial views on free will (we have none) and morality
(it can be determined by science), Harris seems an obvious choice for this
workshop. Perhaps his schedule doesn’t allow him time to participate (he’s
writing another book at the moment), although cynics may suspect that Harris
was snubbed by the organisers.

The workshop is closed to the public, but it will be
recorded and the video made available online at a later date. I’m certainly
keen to watch it; some of the participants famously disagree on certain issues
(Coyne and Pigliucci occasionally snipe at each other from their respective
blogs), so you can bet that a few of the debates will be… feisty.